Every year, the userbase will have the opportunity to vote on three (3) albums they deem "classics" that deserves to be forever immortalized/enshrined in the sputnik hall of fame. There will be a thread in the forums dedicated to this and I will announce it ahead of time. These choices should reflect albums you want to hold at a high level of prestige on this site forever. Every year, you will be pulling from the class of a decade ago - meaning your choices must be from 2007 this year, but next year the "class of inductees" will all come from 2008, and so on. We may at some point do a timeless edition where you can vote on older records (or even a user edition!), but that will come later.

We will tally these votes just like we do the end of year lists. At that time, the collective staff (and possibly some contributors) will piece together a special edition write-up on the official inductees. This may include track write ups, personal reflections, and other insights.

You can start brainstorming your choices if you'd like (the 2007 charts can jog your memory), but please be aware that this is NOT the voting thread. I will make an announcement when that is posted in the forums.

Idea would be better if the choice was between a set list of albums that are a little less known but got high ratings/decent amounts of votes here. Maybe with a period of backers of a particular album canvassing for votes.

As it is the result will be at least two of Radiohead, The National, Bon Iver...plus maybe a metal album is one fails to pick up the votes. Or Animal Collective, Burial at a push.

I'd strip all the above albums (except maybe Burial) out of the running.

I would say no (I outlined that EPs, Live Albums, Compilations etc. do not qualify in the forum post). Since we don't count them at the year-end tallying, I figured it made the most sense to stick to official LPs here as well.

Haha. Come on Sowing, has Jom not taught you anything? The examples you list are supposed to be joke albums. Metro Station would have been a good one for 2007. 'Blackbird' better not be a joke, or else Ties & I will, umm, bind you up & have our way with you.

I'm toying with the idea (this is by no means a final decision) of expanding the results only to more than 3, but for voting purposes it's 3 per person. So don't worry about the usual suspects, just have fun voting for now and we'll sort out the results when we get them.

@sowing you could present them using the bill simmons pantheon hall of fame idea (essentially, that there are tiers to greatness, radiohead could be in tier 1 with a few others, and like bon iver is tier 2, etc.)

That actually crossed my mind already as a ballot idea. Say the top 3 results are Radiohead, Burial, and The National. Radiohead would be a first ballot hall of famer, Burial 2nd ballot, and so on. Then by 2020, we'd have 3 first ballots (or an upper class if you will) and 3 2nd ballots, and so on. Hit me up atop the clouds to discuss more, I think other staffers will want to weigh in on the idea anyway.